my husband and i once considered buying a house with such an open floor plan that the kitchen could be seen from almost every room of the downstairs. we both loved this house (as long as we were not the ones living in it).

we know ourselves. making kitchen messes is a skill we’ve been honing for almost 12 years now. cleaning them up is not. but, as evidenced by today’s reality project submission from tiffany, we are not alone.

tiffany writes:

what you see below is proof that we cook a lot but that we get in and out of the kitchen as quickly as humanly possible. that means that you’ll find food debris pretty much everywhere. we make the food and almost always neglect the clean up part. we can’t even be bothered to close the pantry doors!

tiffany continues:

this scene had about 36 hours more of a mess added to it before it got cleaned. that’s our reality. for us, there’s no time or energy left to clean after cooking. i imagine the kitchen cleaner at the front of the shot saying, “not dirty enough to challenge me. pile some more on before you call for my services!”

thank you , tiffany. and are those hubcaps above your stove? very cool.

and do you remember when i blathered on about getting organized? my husband was excited when i revealed my plans to try out the reframe productivity system for creative people. however, many of you expressed your disappointment at my efforts to get my life in order. it seems that you LIKE seeing my disheveled mess of a life memorialized in photos and posted on the internet. furthermore, some of you have even confessed that these photos help you to feel better about yourselves. to this i say: a) you’re welcome, and b) don’t worry. there will always be plenty of chaos to go around.

today is day 16 of the program, and i am actually having fun with the process. my new file trays (labeled “do,” “file,” “delegate,” and “ideas”) assure that no stray papers ever hit my desk. my filing system is up to date for the first time since we moved into our current home (one year and eight months ago), and i now organize everything i need to do in this cute little vintage note card box:

now, instead of doing tasks according to when they pop into my head, i jot these little jobs down on cards and file them under the day on which i aim to do them. see?

yesterday, i began tackling my email inbox. if you are reading this, and you are wondering why i have not responded to the email you sent me in 75 B.C.E., it’s because re[frame] had not yet been invented back then. duh!

so now my office looks like this. it’s not perfect, and it never will be, but it’s definitely better:

and for those of you with appetites for other people’s slovenliness that cannot be satiated with the tangle of cords above, i submit to you my vanity:

this is where i like to store the occasional wine goblet and the toiletry bag i forgot to unpack after a trip to atlanta last october.

see, i told you that there will always be plenty of chaos to go around.

my parents, sibling, college roommate, husband, children, and friends know that i was simply born without the part of the brain that exhibits concern over the disorder of physical space and provides impetus to clean with tornadic vigor. this is unfortunate for reasons depicted above. i would argue, though, that this weakness is turning out to be a gift now that i am a parent, who is regularly called to tolerate not only my own personal chaos but that of the three other males (and four, if you count the dog), who live in my house.

but some messes, like the one in my kitchen yesterday, are magnaimous enough to defeat even my inner slob. and on those rare occasions, i have no choice but to put on some loud music, go against my very nature, and CLEAN. thanks to these words in barbara brown taylor’s an altar in the world, i am beginning to see that there is a special sort of dignity to be found in scraping smushed strawberries off the floor with my fingernail:

“i no longer call such tasks housework. i call them the domestic arts, paying attention to all the ways they return me to my senses. when the refrigerator has nothing in it but green onions that have turned to slime and plastic containers full of historic leftovers, i know my art is languishing. when i cannot tell whether that is a sleeping cat or an engorged dust ball under my bed, i know that i have been spending too much time thinking. it is time to get down on my knees. after i have spent a whole morning ironing shirts, folding linens, rubbing orange-scented wax into wood, and cleaning dead bugs out of the light fixtures, i can hear the whole house purring for the rest of the afternoon. i can often hear myself singing as well, satisfied with such simple, domestic purpose.

…this is my practice, not yours, so please feel free to continue calling such work utter drudgery. the point is to find something that feeds your sense of purpose, and to be willing to look low for that purpose as well as high. it may be chopping wood and it may be running a corporation. whatever it is, perhaps you will hold open the possibility that doing it is one way to learn what it means to become more fully human, as you press beyond being good to being good for something, in a world with the perfect job for someone like you” (120).

now let’s be honest. i’m not much into ironing, and the bugs in my light fixtures are there to stay. but after yesterday’s (eventual) kitchen cleanup, i could almost hear our house purring. i’ve been trained to look for meaning in sacred texts, good conversation, masters degree programs, and travels to far lands. but there is a lot of truth to be found when i’m on my knees, bringing order out of chaos within the four walls of our fabulously messy house.

[the source for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]